To keep specific products out of your ads, you have three tools with different reach. An Exclude product rule on the catalog drops a product from every channel. The same Exclude product action on a channel drops it from just that one feed. A product set scopes a channel to only the products you want to advertise.
Which exclusion fits your situation#
The right tool depends on how wide the exclusion should reach:
- Out of every channel, everywhere — a brand you can't advertise at all, discontinued lines, restricted products. Use a catalog rule with an Exclude product action.
- Out of just one feed — the product is fine on one network but not another, or your assortment differs per channel. Use a channel rule with an Exclude product action.
- Advertise only a chosen subset — you're intentionally running ads for a curated slice (bestsellers, one brand, in-stock only). Scope the channel's product set.
The first two are subtractive — they drop products that match a condition. The third is a positive selection — it decides which products are in play at all. They compose: a channel exports its product set, then its rules can drop more on top.
Drop a product from every channel with a catalog rule#
An Exclude product action on a catalog rule removes the product from the catalog entirely, so it never reaches any channel or ad. This is the widest reach: because catalogs sit upstream of every channel, one exclude rule keeps the product out of all of them at once.
Reach for this when a product should never be advertised anywhere — a brand you're not allowed to sell, an adult or restricted line, or products you've discontinued across the board.
- Open the catalog and go to the Rules tab.
- Add a rule whose conditions match the group you want gone — a brand, a category, a stock state, a title keyword.
- Add an Exclude product action.
- Publish the catalog so the change goes live.
The full mechanics — the condition operators, the value steps, how rules run in order — live in Fixing your feed data with rules. Like every catalog rule, an exclude rule re-applies on every import, so products that arrive later and match the condition are dropped automatically, without you touching it again.
Drop a product from just one feed with a channel rule#
The same Exclude product action exists on a channel's Rules tab, but scoped to that one channel — it removes the product's entry from this feed only. Other channels and your catalog are unaffected, and the ad network behind this channel simply never sees the product.
Use this when the exclusion is network-specific: a product that one network's policy won't allow but another will, or a deliberately different assortment per channel — for example, advertising your full range on one feed and only a premium selection on another.
Set it up on the channel's Rules tab, exactly as you would a catalog rule but on the channel. The channel's run history reports how many products its rules excluded, and a per-product trace says the product was "excluded by a rule" — so an excluded product never looks like a rendering fault. See Channel automations for the full set of channel actions.
Advertise only a subset with product sets#
A channel exports only the products in its product sets. Anything outside those sets simply isn't in the feed — there's no error, it's just out of scope. So a second way to keep products out of a channel is to narrow what the channel covers in the first place, rather than dropping products one by one.
This is the better fit when you're intentionally advertising a curated subset — only your bestsellers, only one brand, only in-stock products — instead of blocking specific offenders. Define a product set with a query filter (brand, category, price range, availability, and more) or hand-pick the products, then point the channel at it.
See Product sets and product queries for how to build and scope a set, and Selecting and publishing products to edit and publish one.
Out of stock? Usually don't exclude it#
If a product is only temporarily unavailable, excluding it is the wrong tool. An out-of-stock product should normally stay in the feed, marked unavailable — the ad network typically stops delivering it and resumes it automatically once it's back in stock. Excluding it removes it entirely, and it won't return until a rule stops matching.
Most channels already handle this with a built-in Availability rule that flags a product as out-of-stock when its stock count hits zero. Reach for Exclude product for permanent removals — discontinued or unadvertisable products — not for stock that comes and goes. See Channel automations for how availability is handled per feed.
Or ask Aimée#
You don't have to decide the level or build the rule by hand. Describe the outcome in plain language — "stop advertising everything from BrandX everywhere," "exclude out-of-stock products from my Google feed only," or "only advertise my in-stock bestsellers" — and Aimée can set up the catalog rule, the channel rule, or the product set for you, and publish once you approve. She can also trace a single product and tell you exactly why it is, or isn't, in a given feed.
FAQ#
What's the difference between an exclude rule and removing a product from a product set?
A product set decides which products are in scope for a channel at all; an Exclude product rule is a condition that drops matching products on top of that scope, and re-evaluates on every import or render. Both keep the product out of your ads — use product-set scope when you're selecting a subset to advertise, and an exclude rule when you're blocking whatever matches a condition.
If I exclude a product, does it come back when it no longer matches?
Yes. An exclude rule only drops products while its condition is true. When a product stops matching — it's back in stock, or re-labeled out of a blocked category — it flows back into the feed on the next import or render. That's why an exclude rule beats deleting products by hand: it self-corrects as your feed changes.
I excluded a product but it's still showing in my ads.
Publish, then wait. Your changes stay in a draft until you Publish the catalog or channel, and ad networks pick up feed changes on their own schedule after that. If it still doesn't drop, trace the product to confirm which rule and product set are deciding its fate — see A product is missing from my feed or ads.